


whose side are you on? (what side is this anyway?)

by moonbeatblues



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: BACK IN THE CLOWN CAR, M/M, essek... my dear... i read you so right originally and i’m reaping the benefits EVERYDAY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22937578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: “you are one of us, you know,” caleb says, “whether you have meant to become so or not. we do not choose the people who care about us.”no, essek thinks, we do not. he thinks of the umavi— his mother, he thinks of his mother, is allowed to call her that in his own mind— the warmth he wished would fill her eyes.“there is nothing sadder than wishing someone cares for you more than they do,” he continues, like he can hear it, see what plays behind essek’s eyes. the feeling of caleb’s lips pressed to his forehead, the funny pressure of it, still lingers.“you do not have to feel it again. we care for you. please let us. may i see your wrists?”(caleb, and caring for essek)
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein & Essek Thelyss
Comments: 10
Kudos: 307





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> folks.... the past two days.... canon and meta are almost completely severed and i am just a humble writer hoping for rep
> 
> title is from moth’s wings by passion pit, which is SUCH an essek song
> 
> (edit: this has officially become the place for me to dump little shadowgast things close to canon, sorry about that)

he still hasn’t told them about everything. is not even sure it would be possible.

there is time, yet— somehow, he thinks he may be a passenger of the mighty nein’s funny little ship for a while longer— but he is afraid. not afraid that they will hurt him for it— though he has not been on the blunt end of yasha’s strength, before, and the specter of it looms terrifying up before him like never before, he knows she has a sword that is meant to kill mages— no, he is afraid in the way he’s afraid to look into their eyes. afraid to have to tell of the things he has done— worse than they know, than they can even imagine— and have to see how it hurts them up close.

that was the easy part about this, that in the end he’d be away from them, that they’d at least have the luxury of hating him.

you know what’s funny is, when they’d left the last time, he’d thought he’d never see them again. not like this, at least.

he knows them, now— and _gods_ , for something that should feel so bad, it still gets at something so buried and hopeful in him— and of course they were going to find him out, of _course_ a simple illusion wouldn’t be enough for them. of course they’re keeping an eye out for every move the assembly makes— and _he is, too_ , he wants to say, he doesn’t trust the assembly a single _iota_ more than they do. he even saw frumpkin. knew it was over the moment he saw that funny little fey disappearing behind a barrel in the deck of the assembly’s ship. avoiding them at the party was a delay at best, selfish at worst.

and, well, hasn’t everything he’s done in the past years, the past _decades_ , been selfish?

he thought the next time he’d see them would be when they inevitably ended up fighting the assembly over the other beacon, a fight they’d lose. a fight he would have to _make_ them lose.

he hasn’t cried in a long time— that, among so many other things, was trained from him so young, too young (in another world, he thinks, he’s sitting in the plush office of one of den olios’s councillors, and the soft-faced councillor is asking him _does he think his problems have anything to do with how the umavi never held him as a child?_ )— but he cried after they left, sat in his study over the papers he and caleb had scribbled the spell’s early parts out on and sobbed like he hadn’t since he learned about his father.

(in that world with the councillor, their face pinches into a look of practiced sincerity and they say _ah, so there was an absence of **both** parental figures. _there is something comforting about it, recognizing patterns in himself. reasons, when in looking for reasons he so often comes up lacking.)

_so dangerous can be trust,_ he thinks, _that it can make things previously known, previous truths, unrecognizable_. caleb took off the manacles from earlier— and _gods_ , the pain, jester healed him some but caleb had been looking at him when he put them on, had looked him in the eyes he hadn’t convinced himself to change the color of, and hurt him so badly he almost crumpled to his knees, almost lost consciousness.

it is fair, he supposes. it is the same pain he has caused them. has caused so many, and so many there were that would not have been able to endure it. weak as he is, there are those who are weaker.

(“you are one of us, you know,” caleb says, “whether you have meant to become so or not. we do not choose the people who care about us.”

_no_ , essek thinks, _we do not._ he thinks of the umavi— his mother, he thinks of his mother, is allowed to call her that in his own mind— the warmth he wished would fill her eyes.

“there is nothing sadder than wishing someone cares for you more than they do,” he continues, like he can hear it, see what plays behind essek’s eyes. the feeling of caleb’s lips pressed to his forehead, the funny pressure of it, still lingers.

“you do not have to feel it again. we care for you. please let us. may i see your wrists?”)

they’ve put another set on him— the fact that they just carry these things around is startling, to say the least, but this must be justification enough. he can see a loose strand where, he imagines, caleb has wound silver thread around and around the frame of the door. it is not unfamiliar magic. and he is sorry— really is— that they don’t trust him. that he made that an impossibility, before they even met.

he lies back in the bed of the little room they’ve given him— it’s clean, he imagines, for a ship, no dripping water or cloying mold. they are perhaps the least vindictive people he has ever met, and he wants to believe so badly that this is not punishment. they want him to stay, and he wants to want to. wants to think of nothing else than being with them, to be together and simply ignore why it should be that they are.

_this meeting would not take place, were it not for you,_ he thinks. _there would be no need. if the beacon is a god, you have earned its ire like none before. enemies die on the battlefield, but traitors hang._

he goes to move his arms, to grab at the wooden frame of the bed or dig his fingers into his forearms or something else frenzied, and the chain of the manacles stops him. somehow, it is comforting.

sometimes, he thinks, friends keep you from doing things because they would hurt you. he is a traitor, he is powerful and dangerous and there is blood on his hands, but the traitor essek thelyss sits in what should be a prison and thinks of veth brenatto— whose husband he saw kept in chains— calling essek one of them. he thinks of caleb, pleading, he thinks of jester pressing her magic into him with sad, enormous eyes, and sleep finds him.

in the dream that he has, that night— he has not dreamed in so long, almost thought he had forgotten how— he is still bound, by the hands and feet and by a long chain pulling at his neck. there is water, all around, conjured perhaps by the tertiary rock of the ship with the waves, and it drags him down, towards depths he cannot see. he knows of the quasi-deity fjord had been bound to, wonders if this is its influence, dreaming so close to its domain, to one of its chosen, but as the chain pulls at his throat he can see it attached to another.

a few feet away, caleb is there, the end of the chain at his neck, and he looks right into essek’s eyes as they’re pulled closer together. _we are the same,_ he hears, though caleb does not speak. _if damned, then damned together_ , and they thrash in the water and cling to one another.

the water is freezing and burning, somehow, endlessly dark, and stretching forever, and yet, as long as they move, they do not drown.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two more—one before 98, and one after.

“hey, look at me, okay?”

it’s funny, essek’s ears haven’t rung like this since they told him about his father— he can barely hear them over the sound of it, over the sound his body makes at its own panicking.

caleb shuffles forward and holds him by the face with one hand, turns him to look outward, at veth.

(he stops dead when he sees them, and it is for the reason you’d think, of course it is— but it’s also because of veth.

she looks _resplendent_.

happier than he’s ever seen her, essek thinks, even calm and fussing over yeza at their house in the gallimaufry district— she keeps looking down at herself, too, stroking her own hair, examining her reflection in the big glass windows.

_it is the look_ , he thinks, _of someone who loves themselves._ )

“you did this,” caleb says, and it hits him square and heavy in the chest. “i could not have finished my work without you.”

veth had stepped forward to speak, and he can see tears beading in her eyes. happy or sad, he cannot tell.

“you do not believe there is good for you.” caleb gestures, and she comes a little closer. “but there is proof, here,” and veth reaches for essek’s hand, holds it to his own chest. “something you can feel, that you cannot deny.”

“maybe you’re broken,” veth says. “but that’s everyone. me and caleb, and beau and fjord and everyone, we fix each other, a little, every day. you fixed me. let us try with you.”

she looks so _happy_ , essek thinks, the tears are happy, rolling bright down her cheeks. he thinks of writing furiously on the loose papers across his desk with caleb. he thinks of veth and the husband he knows to be somewhere in this city, now, the two of them embracing. he thinks of the warmth in his chest so bright it burned when they opened the door and waved him in, the parasol he’d brought with him.

he thinks of sitting on the edge of their hot tub, with his feet in the water— it’s so warm it makes the rest of him jealous. in his mind’s eye, he moves slowly, like a cat with the shifting sun, until the water closes over his head.

when he opens his eyes, caleb and veth are looking at him with the same warmth, and he lets himself think for a traitorous second, and then another, that perhaps he might deserve it, to feel the way they make him feel.

* * *

it’s not jester that sends him a message that night.

—

essek stays on the wind of eons. it’s an honor, they tell him. one of the finest ships in the empire, and the finest company.

the fourth night at sea, he’s out on the deck. it’s the only time he can go out— everyone on the ship knows, is either a member or is sworn properly to secrecy, and disguise or not, the uninterruption of the sun on the open ocean is unbearable.

there’s a goddess of the night, goddesses of the moons. sometimes, he wishes the kryn followed one of them. maybe they will be convinced, once his work is done. maybe he will be. the allure of forgiveness from someone who can speak is almost violent, at times.

as he’s looking up at the sky, a shape in it solidifies and swoops down— a raven.

“hello, frumpkin,” he says, and the raven lands on the rail. he knows the fey, by now— the eyes always give him away. frumpkin folds his wings, and presents a scroll to essek.

it’s a simple enchantment, magic script on normal paper, but he knows who it is before he reads a word, and his heart leaps in his chest, immediate and traitorous.

_essek,_

_there’s been a problem._

—

it’s a relief, in a way, hearing that the talks might be disrupted by the meddling of a leviathan. diplomacy is far more unpredictable than a sea serpent— with the snake, at least there’s only one monster, and at least it makes no qualms about calling itself one.

his chest gets funny and cold when he hears about fjord, though. he knows they have clerics, and caleb reports that he was brought back successfully, but it won’t be the last attack.

and it’s something more insidious, too— he _likes_ fjord. fjord’s always trusted him the least, no doubt there, but it’s a protective thing rather than a malicious one. from what he hears, fjord goes down a lot more often that the rest of them— _he’s the type to shield with his body_ , essek thinks, _even when that body isn’t quite so strong as those of his friends_. it’s admirable. stupid, certainly, but perhaps he should not be the one judging what risks are stupid, these days.

they all protect each other. essek’s known this since the moment they entered the chamber of the bright queen— caleb hadn’t intended to give the beacon. he’d seen his friends in chains and, simply put, wanted them out. the idea that, had they been a bit more silvertongued, they might have left without undoing almost half his work in a single gesture is at once so unendingly frustrating and terrifying that he can hardly stand to think of it.

but— they’d offered that to him, too. protection.

_they cannot protect me from the dynasty_ , he thinks, nor the empire, _when they tire of me._ this, he’s been at peace with for three years. that he would die, far away from a beacon, and that would be the end. that only in ages to come would he have the potential to be remembered as anything but a traitor. there’s no goddess for him, no forgiveness. he will pass from existence smoothly and quietly, a ship on a night like tonight, without the gaze of either moon, a simple overtake by water or a crash drowned out by the self-proud thunder.

still, though, and his throat gets scratchy and drawn tight like strings, at this— he can’t help but think about it. about how they’ve offered to try. a body, frail and unaware, tossed before the faceless brunt of war, for his sake.

it’s a reckless forgiveness they offer. he always thought it to be passive, to forgive, almost cowardice, and certainly not something he could receive, but in this moment, it seems impossibly, impossibly brazen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> about tether essence, and causing one another harm

“ah,” essek says. “i see.”

caleb used to smile more. he does, around his family, and it sort of looks like someone who has forgotten how and recently learned again.

he is not smiling, now.

“ja. i should hope.”

“is this what you had in mind? when you asked me to teach you this one?”

caleb just looks at him. in one hand, he has the spool of thread, and the other is tied quickly, poorly, to essek’s.

platinum wire is exactly what it sounds like, it digs into the wrist. into both of theirs, if caleb has indeed succeeded. he thinks, for a moment, about rearing up and _stomping_ down, onto his own foot, just to see how well caleb has done.

“i do not anticipate using them on friends when i learn spells. there are still things for you to learn, mein freund, do you think of me, when you write them down?”

_yes_.

he says nothing.

everyone else is crowded downstairs, done packing. “caleb?” veth calls up to him, her voice tinged with worry, glossed over a half-second too late as a tease. “almost done fooling around up there?”

caleb doesn’t reply. he pulls on his hand so essek’s goes with it, so the cord bites both of them, and leans in.

“i want to trust you,” he says, voice low. “they will hurt you, if you go back now. and it will hurt me. if you do not want to do us harm, now is your chance to prove it.”

essek has been offered consecution. more importantly, he thinks he could do it by himself, now, given enough time. but he’s balked. he doesn’t feel that tug to the shards of the luxon— doesn’t properly believe they _are_ shards of the luxon, anyway— when he gets close, and yet.

they’ve found another beacon, dug it from the reticent earth. it’s in jester’s impossibly large bag, he knows, he could dig it out while they’re asleep, while jester’s dead to the world. when he closes his eyes, it’s like he can feel it, the potential of it, feel how close he is to doing something permanent and awful, again. but, well, jester always seems to curl up with beauregard, and if anyone sleeps light, he imagines, it’s the expositor. it’s funny, the way they all protect each other even without noticing it.

caleb watched essek while essek watched jester put it away. here’s the deal, they’d decided, essek and caleb have two days to go back to nicodranas and look it over with yeza. then, caleb decides where it goes, if essek’s found anything worth keeping it from the bright queen any longer.

it’s beyond compassionate. it’s treason.

(the assembly will kill him if he goes back, even if this is brought. there is no question.

he still has half a mind to try— to bring the beacon, maybe, to barter for his life or test its capabilities properly on the people so desperate to see them, or go discreetly, try to steal away the findings they’d only showed him glimpses of.

_they’re thankful,_ they said when last they spoke, when essek was saying farewell to hass, for his help. but they don’t like loose ends.

the only reason he is not dead, already, he thinks, is that he is _here_ , is that caleb gave him the amulet. it sits heavy and cold against his collarbones, and all he can think is that caleb is no longer safe. that he has put them all in danger, that he can’t seem to stop.)

“you said you were sorry this has hurt us, too,” caleb says. “now is your chance not to hurt me, again.”

_this would be the time,_ he thinks. teleportation is always disorienting— the trip to nicodranas would be the time, to simply reach into jester’s bag and pull the thing out and take himself away again while they’re recovering, while fjord is probably throwing up into a bush.

“you have only bought an hour,” essek says, so he does not say _thank you_ or _i’m sorry_ or think about how it’s funny, how indirectly caleb has to threaten him to keep him from getting himself killed.

caleb understands how the burden of staying alive feels lighter when he can see it borne on the shoulders of others, he thinks, and it makes him unendingly sad.

caleb smiles, a little too wide for how his eyebrows still knit together.

“i am hoping,” he says, and laughs, and it sounds like tears, “that you understand the principle.”

he pulls on the cord again. “it is like a double metaphor, you know? the cord? the tether will last even though i will unite us in a moment, and even when that is untied, it will hurt me if you are hurt. maybe the spell will be enough for you to believe that.”

_maybe_ , essek thinks.

“i’m ready to go,” he says instead, and caleb starts to untie the wire. “there is work to do,” and caleb laughs, because neither of them know to which thing he’s referring.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m @seafleece on tumblr!! come say hi and/or yell about how wack things are!!


End file.
